


rescued

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Complicated Relationships, Confessions, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Inhumans (Marvel), Kissing, Sappy Ending, Sexual Humor, Surveillance, Talking, Teasing, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skoulson RomFest 2k16 REDUX  - DAY 7 · 24 July<br/>free theme!</p><p>Elena gets Daisy to realize what she's been missing in front of her all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rescued

He looks like he needs rescuing.

And, let’s be honest.  He’s not even the one being hunted, here.

This is practically an interrogation, and he’s the former Director of SHIELD. 

She shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff right now.  Dammit.

“What?” Elena asks, when she sighs deeply at the surveillance footage.

“Nothing,” Daisy answers, rewinding it and leaning closer, while chewing on her bottom lip. “Are you sure their sensors didn’t track you?

Elena lets her tap at the keyboard for a few moments more, then gets impatient, and turns Daisy’s chair around to face her.

“Of course not. You are worried about him, not about me.”

“You should be _worried_ about your turtle man,” Daisy teases, smirking up at her.

“It was one joke,” Elena tells her, holding up a warning finger. “Only I get to call him that.”

“Coulson’s a grown up,” she assures her, then shrugs.  “So is Mack. They know how this all works.  They’ve been doing it for a long time.”

“Yes, but you blame yourself,” she says, drawing in a breath, shaking her head. “If only they were not so determined to be government stooges.”

“They’re _not_ stooges,” Daisy tells her, annoyed, standing up out of the chair Elena stole from Talbot’s office on the day they left.

It was just meant as a tiny, personal gesture, about who is really going to end up in charge here.

Talbot didn’t think it was funny, obviously, but Elena relaying the memory of his face to her kind of keeps them warm some nights.

“They think they can do something from the inside,” Elena answers. “I understand.  But, what?”

She raises her eyebrows at the other woman. “Are you wanting me to actually answer-“

“No,” she interrupts. “Because, you have no idea.  If you did, you would tell me already.”

It’s true.  She doesn’t know what their play is, she can only guess at this point. 

But she knows _them_.

“I don't like the idea of them being locked up, because of us.”

“I thought they were grown?”

“I know,” she huffs, and sits back down in the chair and spins around to look at the footage again. “It's just that they're so...nice?” 

It’s not like they’ve had a lot of nice lately.  Being Inhuman and hunted by the government, and hate groups, and other Inhumans, even.

“And handsome,” Elena adds, leaning over her shoulder at the survey footage. “At least, Mack is.”

“Coulson's handsome,” she says, a little wrong-footed, and irritated at the idea that Mack being so _ridiculously attractive_ is some important motivating factor here.

She turns back over her shoulder as Elena stares at the footage some more, like she's weighing the idea.

“Shorter. No mucho pelo…”

“You’re talking about his _hair_?!” she interrupts, before Elena can go on.

Zooming in on Mack’s head she pauses and lets it sit there. “Mack is bald.”

Elena starts to chuckle and then Daisy taps the keyboard and zooms it back out.

“Besides, I looked through Coulson’s old SHIELD files,” she tells her. “And he’s had the same hair since he was in his 20s.”

“Oh, you did?” Elena says with a sly grin.

“Yeah,” Daisy nods.  “I looked at all of their files, of course.”  Elena raises her eyebrows at her. “Because, I _can_?” Elena doesn’t seem impressed. “I was a part of Rising Tide at the time.”

“What else did you find?” Elena asks, suddenly curious, turning around to prop herself against the desk.

“About what?” Daisy wonders, glancing up, then right back down after spotting Elena’s smug expression. “I’m not going to share their personal stuff.”

“About…,” Elena starts, leaning over to draw her finger over then screen, then deliberately tap on Coulson’s ass. “That one.”

“Why?”  And why is she tapping on Coulson’s ass? “Stop that.”

“Why?” she asks, looking unflappable. “Oh yes, I can say that. He-“

“He's the Director. It’s all falling on him.”

She purses her lips and then nods towards the screen “It says ‘agent’,” she leans forward to point it out. “Riiiight there-“

“That's not his fault,” she says, peering at the screen, because the data log does show him as an agent now.  Dammit.

“Yes, you think he's _Agent_ Coulson because of you.”

He is. They both know he is, and-

“I mean, I barely knew him,” Elena shrugs. “But I think he's probably ‘agent’ because he should be.”

“That's not fair.” 

It sounds defensive, but there have always been people saying that he made the wrong calls, or questioning him.

“I mean, for now. He can always be the Director in your heart”, she adds, dramatically.

“It's not like that,” she repeats. Because she’s said this before.  People have always asked questions or made assumptions about them.

“For now?” Elena sighs, resigned.

“For now, what?” she enunciates, shutting her eyes to regroup, and get back on task.

“For now, can I please have a look at my turtle man?”

 

#

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

“I’m saving you, what does it look like?” she shouts back.

Then she sends the group of Watchdogs advancing on them flying away with a shove of her hand.

“Daisy, this isn’t-“

“You’re compromised!”

She grabs his hand and pulls him against her, as a look of surprise registers on his face.

“Hold on,” she orders him, and their eyes meet, and then she feels his hand slide around her middle.

“I am,” he tells her, quietly, as she tugs him closer to her and thrusts her other arm towards the floor.

It’s a lot of destruction, but, that’s always followed her.

They land on the bottom floor, buffered by her powers, and she looks up to assess how soon they’ll be followed.

When she glances back at him, he seems a little dazed.  And that’s odd for Coulson, who has been around a lot of people with powers.

“It’s time,” she tells him. “I can’t make you come with me, but I just know, it’s-“

He smiles, in the way he does.  Like he’s just honored to be there with her, even though they’re being shot at.

“We need to go.”

She can already feel the vibrations of the Watchdogs charging down the stairs to the basement.

“Right,” he answers, sounding like a soldier, and following her as she heads to their extraction point.

 

#

“We getting the team back together?” Mack says, with his arm wrapped around Elena, and taking a drink of his beer as she beams up at him.

“We sent extraction teams to May and the others,” Elena chimes in. “Because we are the _real_ SHIELD.”

Mack and Coulson exchange a look at that which is too long for Elena.

“How many SHIELDs are there?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.

“All the pieces working like a whole,” Daisy interrupts, her eyes darting towards Coulson. “We just need all the pieces together.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan,” Mack says, nodding. “What do you need us to do?”

“Provide intel on the ATCU’s operations.  How high the influence of the Watchdogs goes?” Daisy starts in.

“Works for me,” Coulson says, sounding way too enthusiastic, seeing as they’re now both wanted men.

Mack just chuckles, and then leans closer to Elena, whispering something into her ear.

“Yes!  I thought the same,” she says as she laughs, and leans into him. 

“About what?” Coulson asks, too loudly.

Mack takes Elena’s hand, carefully, and deliberately, and walks them towards him. “We’ve both been Director.  Maybe it’s time to put someone else in charge?”

Coulson rolls his eyes, as Mack claps his shoulder, then they both walk off together down the hallway of the safehouse.

Then, they’re alone.

“I think you were a _great_ Director,” Daisy tells him. “For the record.”

“Mack,” he starts, then stops. “Mack’s just seen another side of me that he-,“ Coulson starts to smirk. “That I think he didn’t care to see.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting that.”

She says it before thinking, because she’s missed him so much. And her gamble did pay off, and maybe this will work.

He stares back at her, with that same look he had in the basement of the abandoned building, then reaches for one of the beers and twists the lid off.

A half-smile on his face, as he takes his first sip.

“I’m not ready to be the Director of anything,” she ekes out, and crosses past him to get one for herself.

“Neither was I,” he admits, too quickly, then gets caught up in his own thoughts again. “You are.”

“How do you know?” she asks, and sits on the edge of the round kitchen table.

“I've been living off of…,” he wrestles with it for a moment before he meets her eyes again. “Faith.”

“In what?”

“In you, for a moment. If I'm being honest.”  And she sees the guilt pass over his face. “But then, I didn't have you, and, I realized it was about what we both believed. Together.”

“Wow, that's…“ she doesn’t know what to say, or why he doesn’t see she’s been doing the same thing all along.

“It's corny, I know,” he says bashfully, coming to stand next to her.

“No!” she interrupts. “No, it's...

“What?”

“I like it,” she answers, bumping her shoulder against his.

All this guilt she’s been carrying, and these conflicting feelings, it makes sense.  Wanting to protect him from her being Inhuman, not wanting to disturb the careful boundaries they’ve put in place.

She turns her head towards him, and just like that, he’s so close.  Closer than he’s ever been, she thinks.

“I like when you look at me.  Like that.”

“Daisy,” he whispers, a little shocked by being called out for it.  She can’t quite tell. “I’m old enough to be-“

“I know,” she nods. “But it’s not like much of my life has been very conventional.  To this point.” She bites on her bottom lip as he mulls it over.

“I guess I could say the same.”

He looks like he might need rescuing again.

And she thinks, even before she kisses him, how nice this will be.  What a nice man he is and how she’s missed that kindness.

As she pulls back to make sure it’s okay, that he’s okay with this, his hand cups her face, and he strokes along her cheek with his thumb.

“I’ve missed your rightness, about things.  And how gentle you are.  So much.”

Her eyes start to well up, with gratitude, that they’re together now.  That they can actually say these things to each other. 

She’d forgotten what it felt like to let herself feel loved and understood.

Instead, she lets him kiss her now, threading his hand through her hair, and sighing into her when she opens her mouth under his.

She needed rescuing, too.


End file.
